Conventional routers, firewalls, Internet of things (IoT) management devices and/or platforms do not have user-friendly designs and are not easy to set-up or configure. Typically, user interfaces employed to control and/or interact with these devices are riddled with complex elements or sub applications that need to be opened and browsed to perform management actions. Thus, most non-tech savvy users find device management complicated and confusing.
As the number of devices connected to wireless routers increases, security concerns associated with access to malicious entities have grown. As an example, most home routers and non-tech savvy users are unaware of the websites to which their Internet connected devices are coupled. Moreover, conventional firewall user interfaces for implementing policies to block access to malicious websites are extremely complex and are usually implemented by trained security professionals. For example, to block a user or a device from access to a website, the process implemented by a conventional firewall policy implementation would involve the following steps: (1) identify source Internet address of the device; (2) identify destination internet protocol (IP) address of the blocked website; (3) create a policy for source (e.g., user device) and destination (e.g., website); (4) repeat steps 1 to 3 for each site that needs to be blocked. In this scenario, the administrator or appliance user would have to reconfigure the policy (e.g., repeat steps 1-3) for any change in source address, appliance location, etc. Filtering and/or management of internet addresses via conventional interfaces is also a cumbersome task and needs complex internet address management tools.